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eve11Take heed, fellow travelers, for here there be spoilers!
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Year of the Pig:
The year is 1913. The Doctor and Peri are on holiday. And Toby the Sapient Pig is holed up in a luxurious hotel in Ostend, Belgium, on the run from a time-travelling madman who wants to kill him, and who he knows only as 'the Doctor'! But then, who is the nosy Miss Bultitude, and what ulterior motives does the mysterious Inspector Chardalot have? With cameos by various taxidermied animals, showmen, charlatans, some rather unfortunate cows, and Marcel Proust.
Really, I'm serious! And it was just great fun to listen to. I get the feeling that this whole episode was somewhat of a tribute to Proust's style, but not being at all familiar with his work, that is pure speculation. It's a very proper and prim, meandering mystery. A lot of plots uncovered via dinner conversations, some rather droll kidnappings over luncheons and that sort of thing, and I believe has the widest variety of foodstuffs ever named in a Doctor Who audio. From that description it sounds boring, but the characters truly bring it to life, and the situations of course give it a marvelous flair for the absurd. I was all prepared (from the blurb) for Toby to be some kind of villain, but he really isn't. Actually, he's a very likeable and-- well, pardon the phrase-- human character. It's funny too, because of all the audios I've listened to, the actor who plays Toby (Paul Brooke) has an accent and inflection so near Colin Baker's that a few times it took me a moment to realize which one was speaking! [And oh, hello Adjoa Andoh too! Francine Jones, in the new series, for those playing along; she plays Nurse Albertine (Toby's assistant) in the story.] The Inspector was an odd duck, and you don't find out why until later, but he's played as the perfect gentleman-cum-villain.
The plot throws red herring after red herring (salt-crusted, and served with proper cutlery) at the listener, but they're all quite entertaining anyway. It's a strange concoction of nostalgia and mystery-- with talking pigs-- punctuated by the twisted bits of a plot that only a Doctor Who Audio could get away with. Oh, and the Doctor and Peri are fantabulous in it; more relaxed than the show and even than the earlier audios, and you can really see the affection and respect they have for each other, behind the banter and theatrics. Highly recommended!
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The Boy That Time Forgot
In Victorian London, the Doctor and Nyssa are still trying to figure out a way to find the TARDIS and bring it back from Thomas Brewster's theft. They hold a seance-- actually a quorum of minds for maintaining a block transfer equation-- and start slipping out of time. But something goes wrong, and they are flung back into prehistoric times, along with fellow attendees Beatrice Mapp and Rupert von Tal, to contend with jungle, giant spiders, scorpions, and a blast from the past...
So I read about the fact that Adric shows up over on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elyssadc's blog, and I was quite prepared to hate this episode, but it didn't drive me up a wall nearly as much as I thought it would. An awful lot of this was due to Rupert and Beatrice who were made of awesome. It was like, for one episode at least, Five had his very own Ian- and Barbara-type couple. Actually this whole story was rather reminiscent of a First Doctor story. Prehistoric Earth, giant scorpions, lots of fainting, and falling, and threats of being eaten. Adric was a rather frighteningly creepy old man-- but seriously can you blame the guy? Stuck on prehistoric earth for five centuries with only scorpions and spiders for company? Yeeeeah, I'd go crazy too. I thought they did a good job of showing how he was physically an adult but in many ways also still a capricious child. And one of the reasons I was bummed out learning that Adric came back was that it cheapened the Doctor's whole guilt complex-- but holy heck, they managed to just make it worse on the Doctor, didn't they? Guilty wandering during the seance led him back to the freighter, to saving Adric's life and in some ways, condemning him to a fate worse than death.
It was quite uncomfortable to listen to in places, because it was hard to map the old-man Adric back to the boy in some ways, and in others I think they tried too hard. But oh man, who the hell else would decide to build the "City of Excellence"? How very nerdy-Bill-and-Ted. I liked that the Doctor, while feeling guilty, didn't let that color his judgement of Adric either. He knew the city and the Scorpion King were an abomination, whether or not it was his fault. Of course, I'm sure Adric didn't help his case by dumping the Doctor into the pit with the giant spider in it upon their first meeting. Bad Adric. No maths for you. There was also something very "Holy Terror" about Adric in this, but with less bloodshed and venom, and a tad more redemption.
I also felt bad for the scorpions left behind, and for poor Rupert. As soon as he asked Bea to marry him, you knew his fate was sealed :( Still, I loved when he was fighting off the grandparents with a sling and some rocks. Quite heroic. As always though, I find the notion of dying a hero's death to save the Doctor and his friends a lot less comforting than apparently many others do. Poor Rupert.
I did like the scene where Adric ghosts into the TARDIS and sends it back to the Doctor and Nyssa. Doctor, you are so thick though. Adric says, "I found it!" right before dying, and you still can't figure out that 'it' is the TARDIS? Still, it made for a great little scene between the Doctor and Nyssa after the funeral. He was so down, so conflicted and lost without the TARDIS-- and then his utter glee at the return was phenomenal. And I laughed out loud at the end too.
Overall, slightly icky-creepy in that same way that bothers me when they try to dress up actors in age makeup-- sort of an "I can't believe they did that--please don't go there, please don't go there, please--oh ugh, you went there" kind of way. But on the whole still entertaining, both as an exploration of the Doctor's guilt and the relationship between him and Adric, and as an old school pulp adventure in the Jules Verne vein.
======================
=======================
Year of the Pig:
The year is 1913. The Doctor and Peri are on holiday. And Toby the Sapient Pig is holed up in a luxurious hotel in Ostend, Belgium, on the run from a time-travelling madman who wants to kill him, and who he knows only as 'the Doctor'! But then, who is the nosy Miss Bultitude, and what ulterior motives does the mysterious Inspector Chardalot have? With cameos by various taxidermied animals, showmen, charlatans, some rather unfortunate cows, and Marcel Proust.
Really, I'm serious! And it was just great fun to listen to. I get the feeling that this whole episode was somewhat of a tribute to Proust's style, but not being at all familiar with his work, that is pure speculation. It's a very proper and prim, meandering mystery. A lot of plots uncovered via dinner conversations, some rather droll kidnappings over luncheons and that sort of thing, and I believe has the widest variety of foodstuffs ever named in a Doctor Who audio. From that description it sounds boring, but the characters truly bring it to life, and the situations of course give it a marvelous flair for the absurd. I was all prepared (from the blurb) for Toby to be some kind of villain, but he really isn't. Actually, he's a very likeable and-- well, pardon the phrase-- human character. It's funny too, because of all the audios I've listened to, the actor who plays Toby (Paul Brooke) has an accent and inflection so near Colin Baker's that a few times it took me a moment to realize which one was speaking! [And oh, hello Adjoa Andoh too! Francine Jones, in the new series, for those playing along; she plays Nurse Albertine (Toby's assistant) in the story.] The Inspector was an odd duck, and you don't find out why until later, but he's played as the perfect gentleman-cum-villain.
The plot throws red herring after red herring (salt-crusted, and served with proper cutlery) at the listener, but they're all quite entertaining anyway. It's a strange concoction of nostalgia and mystery-- with talking pigs-- punctuated by the twisted bits of a plot that only a Doctor Who Audio could get away with. Oh, and the Doctor and Peri are fantabulous in it; more relaxed than the show and even than the earlier audios, and you can really see the affection and respect they have for each other, behind the banter and theatrics. Highly recommended!
=======================
============================
The Boy That Time Forgot
In Victorian London, the Doctor and Nyssa are still trying to figure out a way to find the TARDIS and bring it back from Thomas Brewster's theft. They hold a seance-- actually a quorum of minds for maintaining a block transfer equation-- and start slipping out of time. But something goes wrong, and they are flung back into prehistoric times, along with fellow attendees Beatrice Mapp and Rupert von Tal, to contend with jungle, giant spiders, scorpions, and a blast from the past...
So I read about the fact that Adric shows up over on
elyssadc's blog, and I was quite prepared to hate this episode, but it didn't drive me up a wall nearly as much as I thought it would. An awful lot of this was due to Rupert and Beatrice who were made of awesome. It was like, for one episode at least, Five had his very own Ian- and Barbara-type couple. Actually this whole story was rather reminiscent of a First Doctor story. Prehistoric Earth, giant scorpions, lots of fainting, and falling, and threats of being eaten. Adric was a rather frighteningly creepy old man-- but seriously can you blame the guy? Stuck on prehistoric earth for five centuries with only scorpions and spiders for company? Yeeeeah, I'd go crazy too. I thought they did a good job of showing how he was physically an adult but in many ways also still a capricious child. And one of the reasons I was bummed out learning that Adric came back was that it cheapened the Doctor's whole guilt complex-- but holy heck, they managed to just make it worse on the Doctor, didn't they? Guilty wandering during the seance led him back to the freighter, to saving Adric's life and in some ways, condemning him to a fate worse than death. It was quite uncomfortable to listen to in places, because it was hard to map the old-man Adric back to the boy in some ways, and in others I think they tried too hard. But oh man, who the hell else would decide to build the "City of Excellence"? How very nerdy-Bill-and-Ted. I liked that the Doctor, while feeling guilty, didn't let that color his judgement of Adric either. He knew the city and the Scorpion King were an abomination, whether or not it was his fault. Of course, I'm sure Adric didn't help his case by dumping the Doctor into the pit with the giant spider in it upon their first meeting. Bad Adric. No maths for you. There was also something very "Holy Terror" about Adric in this, but with less bloodshed and venom, and a tad more redemption.
I also felt bad for the scorpions left behind, and for poor Rupert. As soon as he asked Bea to marry him, you knew his fate was sealed :( Still, I loved when he was fighting off the grandparents with a sling and some rocks. Quite heroic. As always though, I find the notion of dying a hero's death to save the Doctor and his friends a lot less comforting than apparently many others do. Poor Rupert.
I did like the scene where Adric ghosts into the TARDIS and sends it back to the Doctor and Nyssa. Doctor, you are so thick though. Adric says, "I found it!" right before dying, and you still can't figure out that 'it' is the TARDIS? Still, it made for a great little scene between the Doctor and Nyssa after the funeral. He was so down, so conflicted and lost without the TARDIS-- and then his utter glee at the return was phenomenal. And I laughed out loud at the end too.
Overall, slightly icky-creepy in that same way that bothers me when they try to dress up actors in age makeup-- sort of an "I can't believe they did that--please don't go there, please don't go there, please--oh ugh, you went there" kind of way. But on the whole still entertaining, both as an exploration of the Doctor's guilt and the relationship between him and Adric, and as an old school pulp adventure in the Jules Verne vein.
======================
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-08 04:08 am (UTC)LOL...you made me think of Linus.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 04:06 pm (UTC)And don't even get me started on Year of the Pig. One of my top five favorite audios. Period.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 02:15 am (UTC)Year of the Pig is such a strange tale but it was fascinating nonetheless and extremely entertaining. I really loved the Six/Peri dynamic too, and that Peri showed she was well-read and smart and a quick thinker-- so not the ditzy persona they foisted on her in the TV series.